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Open for a While

Even though the US government is open again, ScienceInsider says it'll take time before everything is as it was before at federal research agencies.

On Friday, President Donald Trump announced a deal to re-open the government, which had been shut in part for 35 days, for three weeks while he and lawmakers continue to negotiate the federal budget, as the Washington Post reports. It notes that the shutdown affected federal agencies from Internal Revenue Service to the Food and Drug Administration.

But as ScienceInsider reports, affected agencies will first have to deal with the backlog of work that piled up while they were shuttered. For instance, it says that the National Science Foundation will have to grapple with processing award transactions and rescheduling review panels, while other agencies resurrect research studies that had been halted.

At the same time, though, ScienceInsider notes that the agencies will have to brace for another possible shutdown in three weeks if lawmakers again fail to come to an agreement.

"I don't know if we should expect to see very much happen in the next three weeks," Sarah Nusser, vice president for research at Iowa State University, tells ScienceInsider.

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